LINGUIST List 21.2759 Wed Jun 30 2010 All: Obituary: Gösta Bruce Editor for this issue: Elyssa Winzeler <elyssalinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm Directory         1.    Merle Horne, Obituary: Gösta Bruce Message 1: Obituary: Gösta Bruce Date: 30-Jun-2010 From: Merle Horne <merle.horneling.lu.se> Subject: Obituary: Gösta Bruce E-mail this message to a friend It is with great sorrow that we convey the tragic news that Gösta Bruce, Professor of Phonetics at Lund University, Sweden, passed away on June 15 following a short illness. He was 63 years old. Gösta Bruce played a very influential role internationally and contributed to the development of models and methods within prosody research. His doctoral dissertation, 'Swedish word accents in sentence perspective' (1977), was seminal in this regard. In contrast to earlier work on Swedish tone accents, Gösta did not limit himself to describing how the accents were realized phonetically. Rather, his goal was to understand the underlying reason why they pattern like they do. His most influential scientific contribution was the analysis of Swedish intonation contours into discrete components: word accents, sentence accents and boundary tones that realize various combinations of two phonological tones (High and Low). This insight, that there could be higher level, more general prosodic patterns, inspired many other researchers to apply the same kind of analysis to other languages, and these ideas now characterize current models of the phonology and phonetics of intonation. In addition to this pioneering contribution to prosodic research, Gösta Bruce's scientific career also included significant contributions to the description of the intonation of Swedish dialects. Much of this work was carried out within the framework of the projects SweDia 2000 and Simulekt. An important product of the investigations carried out in these projects is the recently published book 'Vår fonetiska geografi' 'Our phonetic geography'. Since 2007, Gösta Bruce also functioned as president of the International Phonetic Association. In addition to his important research achievements, Gösta was also an excellent academic leader. In both his role as head of the department and as responsible researcher for many projects, Gösta Bruce was esteemed and respected. Moreover, he was a very enthusiastic and admired teacher and supervisor who inspired many undergraduate students and doctoral candidates with his wisdom and deep understanding of spoken language structure. His projects made it possible for many young researchers to obtain experience and his exemplary leadership that was characterized by goal-directedness, humor and empathy, contributed to the department's open-minded academic environment. Gösta Bruce's encouragement, readiness to discuss and receptivity for new ideas was invaluable for his students. He was a master in the art of inspiring doctoral candidates to believe in themselves, to rely on their own capacity, and to deal with problems by seeing their possibilities instead of their difficulties. We will remember Gösta, not only as an internationally recognized and respected scientist but also as our colleague who always had something wise to say when there was a problem to deal with. With Gösta, one could just as easily talk about sports (Gösta was an elite athlete in his youth) as about science. Gösta shared his great knowledge willingly, and he did this without pretense. He was an unusually humble person, so much so, that one could easily forget when sitting at the same coffee table with him, that it was the well-known phonetician Gösta Bruce that sat there. For us, the private person Gösta and the academic leader professor Bruce were one and the same person. Gösta was himself in all situations. To have been a colleague and student of Gösta Bruce's has been a privilege that we will always be grateful for. Friends and colleagues at the Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, the Center for Languages and Literature, and the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University, Sweden Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 30-Jun-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.